Sunday, March 30, 2014

It seems like when I check my "watch list" at FamilySearch's Family Tree every week that there are a lot of changes being made by FamilySearch. I was horrified to read in the blog The Ancestor Files that "information" is being migrated from New Family Search to Family Tree and that the source information is being corrupted.I agree with Amy Tanner Thiriot that unless this stops, FamilySearch Family Tree will not be a place for serious genealogists. This will be very sad, since so many of us have trusted FamilySearch as a place for us to preserve our hard work and our family history forever. My resolve to keep my own records in ever more detail and to back it up in multiple locations is strengthened even more.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

I greatly enjoyed this segment from the BYU show Ancestors about how one person learned so much about her family. Fabiana Chiu told her story about visiting Peru with her Chinese parents and showed many photographs and heirlooms.
Bill Zimmerman author of How to Tape Instant Oral Biographies: Recording Your Family's Life Story Using Sound and Sight was also interviewed and shared information of how to conduct oral interviews. Living family members are our greatest genealogical resource.
The episodes of the KBYU TV PBS show Ancestors are available at http://www.byub.org/ancestors/.

Friday, March 7, 2014

I highly recommend this blog post and all of James Tanner's posts. I agree with his sentiments in this post. I like this statement found in his last paragraph:

"What we do need is a realization by those who would fix the genealogical community that they cannot throw away the old product. Doing historical research is mostly a very solitary, demanding, intellectually stimulating, intensive, engrossing, overwhelmingly difficult and very academic discipline. It cannot be sugar-coated for broad public consumption."

The more I learn about research the more I realize how demanding it can be. I am trying hard to focus on what I need to learn and to do my research systematically, step by step.

I do hope that some of my children and grandchildren will eventually show an interest in continuing my efforts. I do not expect that they all will. What I do hope for all my children and grandchildren is that they will feel connected to our family and that being part of our family will be important to them. And I hope that they will have critical thinking skills and a desire to seek for the truth in everything in life. I don't think that they need to be "a genealogist" for this to happen.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Discuss the benefits
and the drawbacks of Online Family Trees like Family Tree and Ancestry Tree and
Personal Family Tree Software like Roots Magic, Ancestral Quest or Legacy. Can
we use just one or the other? Why or why not?

Re: Online
Family Trees. I have
quite a bit of experience with FamilySearch Family Tree and its predecessor New
Family Search. I have IOUS’s in my ancestry, individuals of unusual size, and
this has been very frustrating. There have been some “pedigree wars” with one
branch of my family, where someone would change Henry Rollins to John Porter
Rollins and then someone else would change it back and then the other person or
persons would reverse the change and back and forth. It has been actually kind
of funny, like the good fairies in Sleeping
Beauty changing Aurora’s dress from pink to blue and back again. Even with
all the frustration I have experienced with these FamilySearch products I am
thankful that we have them available. They are constantly getting better and
are great for collaborating with others.

I also have limited experience with family
trees on Ancestry.com and MyHeritage.com. I think I would like to discuss
MyHeritage.com for this assignment.

A year ago I attended
RootsTech and we were offered a free six-month membership My Heritage in
exchange for submitting a GEDCOM file. So I submitted my father’s large GEDCOM
file and got my free membership. I renewed the subscription after the
six-months, so I have had it about a year. The motto of My Heritage is “Do your
genealogy while you sleep” because the program is constantly comparing your
tree to other trees and advising you when there are record matches or new
information. I get frequent emails advising of new matches. My father had over
400 first cousins (because of polygamy) and this generation has mostly died
off. Many of the matches are advising me of obituaries or Find a Grave or
Billion Grave records matching the names in my father’s GEDCOM. So My Heritage
has essentially updated the GEDCOM file. I still need to enter the information,
the sources and citations into my own record, however.

I think that online
trees are wonderful for preliminary research. They are a good first place to
look. The family trees are particularly valuable if they have sources. Just
last Sunday my daughter-in-law asked me how to research one of her
ancestors. All she knew was the name. So
we looked online. Searches on both FamilySearch Family Tree and in Ancestry.com
Family Tree led us to several census records, a civil war record and a
photograph. So now she knows a lot more about this individual and she has leads
to research and to verify in Iowa, Ohio, Illinois and Virginia

Re:
Personal Family Tree Software. I have had the most experience with Legacy because I won the software
a few years ago on a radio show. I recently purchased the updated version
Legacy 8.0. It has many nice features. When I was doing the assignment about
using census records as sources I went to Legacy to print out blank census
forms and used them to complete the assignment. It was very handy. However,
Legacy is probably more complicated to use than some of the others. I have had
some experience with Ancestral Quest and probably it is the best for those
people who are transitioning from using PAF (Personal Ancestral File). And I
have been learning RootsMagic in this class, of course.

I definitely believe
that we need to use both online family
trees and personal software. I cringed when I heard about someone who threw
away all their personal family records because “now it is all on New Family
Search!” Things do not stay the same at
the FamilySearch family trees. Others can and do make changes and sometimes
things are lost. Never put any information or photos or stories or documents on
FamilySearch without keeping your own files. The other online trees are not
subject to being changed as much by others, but these other web sites might not
be permanent and data could also be lost. Another drawback to online trees
might be the loss of privacy. And someone could copy your information and
publish it as their own work. Do not put anything on the Internet if you do not
want to give away the rights to it. You will have to weigh the benefits of
sharing against the possibility of plagiarism. And in the interest of accuracy
you might not want to “publish” information on the Internet until you are sure
it is reasonably correct information. It is very valuable to keep your records
in personal software on your computer, so you can work with it and use it to
help you as you make discoveries and develop conclusions.

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About Me

Jeanette lives in West Jordan, Utah. She owns Drake Family Farms Goat Dairy along with her husband Ron and sons Richard and Dan. Dan also has a goat dairy in Ontario, California. So there is a Drake Family Farms -- Utah and a Drake Family Farms -- California.

On the Utah farm there are Saanen, Nubian and Alpine dairy goats. Every goat has a name and is registered with the American Dairy Goat Association. The Drake Family has been raising dairy goats since the 1980s. They take pride in breeding quality animals. They participate in DHIA testing and ADGA linear appraisal. They use artificial insemination for some of their breeding and have collected from their best bucks and offer semen for sale. Quality dairy goat animals is the foundation of quality goat milk products.

Some of the quality products of Drake Family Farms are goat milk (Raw and Grade A pasteurized), goat milk yogurt, many kinds of goat milk cheese, handmade goat milk soap, goat milk emollient cream and goat milk lotion. They sell raw goat milk as well as all the other products at a small store located on their farm in West Jordan. Other products are available at other retail locations and online.